The Purple Crayon

65 points by 10char 13 years ago | 13 comments

softbuilder 13 years ago |

I read this when I was 4. It's a simple but amazing little book. I think it contributed to my active imagination as a child. The only downside is that I drew on the walls a little bit. :)

protomyth 13 years ago | |

Buy the book and the buy butcher paper for the walls of the kids room - works fairly well

laminated white cardboard and dry erase markers for older children

jasonfried 13 years ago |

This was my favorite book growing up.

I can't trace it exactly, but I feel like it gave me permission to create my own version of a lot of things that we usually just have to live with.

gruseom 13 years ago |

That purple crayon sounds ultra cool. I don't remember having read that book, but the OP reminded me of one called Mr Pine's Purple House that made a big impact on me when I was learning to read. Maybe there's a secret purple fraternity of children's books.

Mr Pine lives on a street where all the houses are white with white picket fences, and he can never find his own damn house. (The book didn't say "damn".) One day he decides to bust loose and paint it purple. I remembered this as a crypto-anarchistic 60s radical "do your own thing" kind of thing. It stuck in my mind as a subversive influence.

Years later I discovered that a fan group devoted to this book had formed on the internet and persuaded the now 80-year old author to republish it. I mentioned this randomly one day and months later my son cleverly gave it to me as a birthday present. The whole thing turned out to be far tamer than I remembered! Either it was extremely gentle crypto-anarchism or I totally read that into it. I'm not sure which explanation is better.

dublinben 13 years ago |

I loved this book as a kid. I'm sure it did something to inspire my wild imagination.

Unfortunately, I see technology as less inviting to young tinkering as it once was. The command line is obscured away in modern operating systems. Mobile devices are locked down, and impossible to create new programs with anyway. If this trend continues, I fear the programming will be less accessible to young people than ever before. In the UK, the number of students studying computer science is already dramatically down from its peak.

http://royalsociety.org/news/ict-computer-science/

seanmcdirmid 13 years ago | |

And yet, we have increasingly better robotic toolkits, Minecraft and LittleBigPlanet as popular video games, 3D printers, and so on. Its not all negative.

jonathanjaeger 13 years ago |

Best children's book ever! Probably the book title I've randomly thrown into conversation the most in my adult life.. I'm not sure why. Maybe the distinctive title and character.

RexRollman 13 years ago |

I never read this book as a child but I have read it many times with my nine year old daughter and I really like it. It is wonderfully imaginative and the artwork is quite nice.

I also want to mention that Crockett Johnson also did a comic strip called Barnaby, which Fantagraphics will be republishing in May.

rishimoko 13 years ago |

I'm guessing Clay is in his 20's? If so, I'm approaching 52 years old and I loved this book equally as much in 1966 or thereabouts. If you're reading this, you made my day by reminding me of it.

> "Coding democratized how we can solve our own problems, regardless of age."

Well said. I'd add that very few old men are innovators, especially when it comes to CS or the like.

What I'm glad to see is more folks in this generation learning how to create their own channels, sell what they make and not depend on larger entities for their survival.

dfc 13 years ago |

It's the story of a boy named Harold and his namesake crayon

I don't remember the story by heart but I don't think the crayon was named Harold. But I never obsessed over the story so I could be wrong. Was the crayon named harold?

nsmartt 13 years ago | |

This seems to be a mistake. I'm pretty sure the namesake mentioned is in reference to the book title, not the boy's name.

dfc 13 years ago | | |

Correct, it is an incorrect use of the word namesake. But I'm not sure what the author's intention was when he used it.

pnewman2 13 years ago |

I read this book as a child and now I read it to my young son. Creativity is certainly timeless.